I am now working on a paper on how conversation analysis can be used for analyses of CMC, and consequently I get into the question of oral-like vs. written-like features of online synchronous communication. Some scholars who have written about this seem to think that CMC is a hybrid between the spoken and the written mode of communication (as for instance Collot & Belmore in Herring 1996) whereas others see it as a third medium. Crystal (2001) advocates the second alternative and claims that one of the affordances is that you can communicate with as many as 20 people simultaneously. In my opinion it seems impossible to communicate with that many people at the same time. Even though you have all their postings on your screen I doubt that you could follow all the threads. Instead you have to choose a few threads to focus on and to contribute to.

Tomorrow Ume University and
HUMlab will be invaded by kids from 6-12 years of age. The idea is that
they will get to explore some of the activities that are carried out at
the university (somewhat adapted of course). About 120 children will
visit HUMlab, and my resposibility will be to try and explain how (and
why) computer games can be studied at university level. This is not an
easy task, but luckily I will have help from my colleague Stefan
Blomberg who is writing his thesis on cultural aspects of computer
gaming. (By the way: Stefan has put together a (Swedish) page with lots
of <a href=”http://www.spelforskning.just.nu/”>links to gaming research
resources</a>.)

I have now received my first credits on the doctoral program. Hurray =)
Language contact was the topic of the course – very interesting but not exactly in line with what my research will be about. I also have two other courses which I have started but where I need to write papers to get the credits.

Wednesday and Thursday this week there is a workshop in HUMlab on “Dynamic maps”. Speakers and guests from all over the world will attend the workshop, and we are now busy getting everything set for the event. Lisa from Bildmuseet here in Ume is decorating the lab with images from an exhibition called “Tankens bilder” (Images of thought), and it’s turning out great. Read more about the workshop on HUMlab’s web page.

Last Friday I presented my thesis statement at a seminar at the English department. I keep changing my mind on how to approach my subject, but now I think that I have a somewhat clearer picture of what I want to do. I plan on dividing my thesis into three parts. The first one will be the most general one, where I will present my theoretical model and conduct case studies online to compare the communication in different types of environments. Focus in the second part will be intercultural communication and in the third part of my thesis I will focus on emerging multiplex communication scenarios.

Prof. Walter Schmitz is here in Ume at the moment giving lectures on conversation analysis. Yesterday he gave a paper in which he compared face-to-face communication with Video conferencing, and here I would like to summarize some of my own reflections. One of the problems with video conferencing, in his view, was that you are always positioned in different locations. This is something which I think a platform like Travler could overcome (at least to some extent). Here you are under the illusion that you are actually transported to another place where you can interact with others. This means that you can position yourself and turn toward the person you are talking to – something which cannot be done in a video conference. However, mimics and other non-verbal cues are more difficult to get across. Nevertheless, the sence of presence which users experience is likely to be higher in Traveler than in Video conferencing which might influence the communication patterns. (This is something which I plan on developing further in my thesis. I have written a smaller paper about presence and communication already which can be found on HUMlab ’s webpage)

We are about to start a project in which distance students of Italian get to meet virtually on a plattform called Traveler, which supports audio communication in real time. Users are represented by avatars and can move about in the environment and communicate with one another. Yesterday the students had their first encounter with the program, and I was there as technical support. This turned out to be a somewhat chaotic meeting, but I think it was rewarding for those who were able to get inworld. Some of the lessons learned: See below…
(Oh there is more…)

I have now returned from Limerick, Ireland where I have attended the Eurocall conference (CALL=Computer Assisted Language Learning). This conference was very valuable to me in many ways. Apart from getting an overview of what is central in this field at the moment I also had many opportunities to make new contacts and to meet people f2f whom I have only met virtually before.
(Oh there is more…)

All net researchers who know Swedish are recommended to read Sveningson, Lˆvheim and Bergquist’s book “Att fnga N‰tet: Kvalitativa metoder fˆr Internetforskning”. The authors present an up-to-date overview of online research and describe benefits and drawbacks of different methods. They also include a section on ethical considerations which is well worth reading.